Conference 2006, 6-8 April 2006, Supply Chain Management Institute, San Diego: Creating and Managing Value in Supply Networks

Citation

Croom, S. (2007), "Conference 2006, 6-8 April 2006, Supply Chain Management Institute, San Diego: Creating and Managing Value in Supply Networks", Supply Chain Management, Vol. 12 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/scm.2007.17712eaa.001

Conference 2006, 6-8 April 2006, Supply Chain Management Institute, San Diego: Creating and Managing Value in Supply Networks

About the Guest EditorSimon Croom is the Executive Director of the Supply Chain Management Institute at the University of San Diego and an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School in the UK. His areas of expertise include strategic supply chain management, the impact and nature of e-business systems on SCM and the development of world-class capabilities across supply chains. He has been an advisor to the UK Office of Government Commerce and is currently working very closely with a number of Fortune 100 corporations on their supply chain and organizational development.

Conference 2006, 6-8 April 2006, Supply Chain Management Institute, San Diego: Creating and Managing Value in Supply Networks

This special issue contains five papers selected from the combined Fourth Worldwide Symposium in Purchasing & Supply Chain Management, 15th Annual IPSERA Conference and 17th NARTS Conference. Conference 2006 attracted 280 academics and practitioners from around the world to the Supply Chain Management Institute on the University of San Diego campus to present research around the theme of Creating and Managing Value in Supply Networks. The papers presented addressed a wide range of topics including procurement, supply and sourcing, logistics, operations, chain & network management and strategic decision making. The conference was preceded by a one-day doctoral workshop chaired by Dr Marc Day of Henley Management Centre – which attracted 31 candidates and 30 participating faculty from around the world, in a highly successful and formative program designed to enhance the development of young researchers in this field.

The scope and scale of Conference 2006 served as a further testament to the significant changes that have taken place in research and practice into supply chains in the decade since the first Worldwide Symposium in Arizona in 1995. In particular, there was a strong emphasis on the increasingly strategic global role played by supply chain management research. It is my opinion that the quality and scope of papers now being seen at academic conferences around the globe reflect a “coming of age” of the discipline, one which is also being mirrored by a major transition in the health and professionalism of the purchasing and supply function. For example, in recent years there has been a marked improvement in senior purchasing & supply salaries (as attested by surveys by ISM and CIPS) and in the status of the supply professional. However, the challenges faced in purchasing and supply have also changed drastically. This issue of SCM:IJ and the associated Conference 2006 proceedings provide a significant examination of the nature of those challenges.

The keynote element of the conference consisted of two practitioner sessions which focused on the remarkably similar nature of the supply chain challenges faced by organizations in a wide range of sectors. Our first keynote was from Cisco Systems, with the second keynote consisting of a panel discussion (chaired by Dr Lisa Ellram of Colorado State University) including the US Marine Corps, Intuit (producers of Quick Books and Turbo Tax), the Sourcing Interests Group, Qualcomm, and Northrop Grumman Corporation. The three key challenges discussed by our experts addressed the problems of coordinating supply across complex global networks, coping with uncertainty and risk, and the challenge of strategic alignment. In selecting the papers for this edition it was my intention to address these challenges.

The papers represent some of the strongest papers from the conference. They provide a flavour of the conference in terms of the range of issues explored, which were particularly well represented by the keynote speakers. Finally, the selection for this issue provides a fairly international representation of concern for supply chain management knowledge and theory.

The papers were chosen from a very strong shortlist of the 208 papers presented in San Diego, and our process was to begin with those papers that were highly recommended by the conference attendees and particularly the session moderators. A range of papers were put out to review and resulted in an issue that is both timely and (I hope) provides valuable insights and discussions of the more pressing concerns of supply chain academicians today.

The first paper in this issue is “The proactive alignment of sourcing with marketing and branding strategies: a food service case” by Andrew Cox, Daniel Chicksand and Tong Yang, all from the University of Birmingham, UK. This paper was selected as recipient of the Conference 2006 Supply Chain Management: an International Journal Best Paper Award. This paper provides some powerful insights into the potential connections between sourcing and competitive advantage and offers a very strongly presented debate around configuration based approaches.

The second paper “Agile supply chain transformation matrix: an integrated tool for creating an agile enterprise” is by Manisra Baramichai, Emory W. Zimmers Jr and Charalambos A. Marangos, all from Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, USA. This paper serves as an interesting counterpoint to Cox et al. by proposing a practical framework and methodology for configuring supply chains to provide agile, responsive capabilities.

The third paper “Variance vs average: supply chain lead-time as a predictor of financial performance” by William Christensen of Dixie State College of Utah, Richard N. Germain of University of Louisville and Laura Birou of ADR International, USA. This paper explores the known challenges of demand variability on supply chain performance by concentrating on the financial consequences of demand variability. The paper provides a valuable examination of the implications of average lead time and demand variation on financial performance.

The fourth paper is “Information sharing and supply chain performance: the role of connectivity and willingness” by Stanley Fawcett of Brigham Young University, Paul Osterhaus of Land’s End, USA, Gregory Magnan of Seattle University, James C. Brau of Brigham Young University and Matthew W. McCarter of University of Illinois. Their study explores the nature of supply chain information sharing between and across supply chain partners. It is clear from the existing literature that information sharing enhances the integration and control of supply chains. The authors explore both the systems connectivity and the willingness aspects of information sharing in order to understand more clearly the impact of information systems investments on supply chain practices. The paper offers some compelling insights into potential causes of poor supply chain information strategy resulting from a lack of attention to the “softer” elements of systems implementation.

The fifth paper is a conceptual paper “The modes of supply net management: a capability view” by Senja Svahn of the University of Jyväskylä and Mika Westerlund of Helsinki School of Economics, Finland. This paper presents a fascinating study of the literature in order to develop a model of the management of supply chains and networks from a capabilities view of business. Their study proposes a model to link supply chain capabilities with relevant management activities. As such it provides both a conceptually rich debate and offers practical guidance for decision makers.

Authors of the papers are to be congratulated for contributing to a Special Issue by offering a quality consistent with the high standards of the Journal. As a Guest Editor, I am also extremely grateful to the reviewers without whose diligence and constructive advice this objective could not have been achieved. The process of selection, review, refinement and final submission is a relatively demanding one. Without the “value network” of all participants it would not have been possible to deliver this issue!

Simon Croom